


The End of the Line

by just_desserts



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Confused Bucky Barnes, M/M, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-13 23:44:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5721523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_desserts/pseuds/just_desserts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky never remembers anything unless he writes it down in the book he keeps hidden from his handlers, the people he's always trusted. But now that he's starting to remember things, he's not so sure he wants to be on their side at all. At least, not without Steve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End of the Line

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, so this is my first fic involving Bucky and is sort of full of feels for the one and only Winter Soldier. I hope just mentions of Steve is enough, since he isn't actually in the fic. But this piece just sort of happened so I hope you like it!

He didn’t have friends. He had targets. Missions. He had enemies and handlers. He had no memories, just like it was supposed to be because that was normal they told him. He had Hydra, and the familiar red symbol to represent it. He had a kill list he kept stowed away from them, so he could brandish every name into his mind when he read it and never forget what he did or why he did it. But not friends.

So why had the one they said was ‘Steve’ called him his friend?

They said he was good, that he couldn’t be stopped. His skills were a certain set they couldn’t find in anyone else. But they didn’t know that it wasn’t him, it was his training. His mind sometimes hesitated before he pulled the trigger or gave the deadly blow, but his body carried it all out.

No, he couldn’t hesitate. He was skillful, a professional who did as his handlers told him. No questions asked and a mission report to give once he’d done the job. He was always prepared to kill, to be on alert and ready to engage his targets. Some were just more difficult than others.

Steve was one of those.

He didn’t remember much. That usually meant they had put him in the chair and wiped him again. He’d written that down in his book too, something his handlers couldn’t know or they’d destroy it along with him. Memories usually floated in and out of his mind, things he couldn’t hold onto for long before they slipped away, no trace left behind. But this time had been different.

Seeing his face, those blue eyes he could never forget, the blonde tousled hair, and calm, determined face stirred something in him. This had never happened before, but the one called Steve made him feel something in his chest. His handlers said those stirrings were emotions for his past killings he didn’t remember. But he wasn’t so sure.

They had given him a name, one that didn’t quite make sense to him, fit him: The Winter Soldier. There had been a name before, he was sure of it. Especially when Steve had said ‘Bucky’ on the bridge, as if it belonged to him. But his mind still couldn’t make sense of it.

When the mask had torn away from his face, when he had been utterly exposed and weakened, there had been a fleeting moment when he’d thought he’d recognized him. Steve. But that couldn’t be right, could it? He didn’t know anyone, especially anyone he had to be prepared to kill. He was unattached, which was why they said he was the best.  
But being unattached also meant not loving anyone. Ever. And that got lonely very quickly. Or at least when he realized he didn’t have anyone.

Maybe things would have been different had he lived through everything with Steve, been there at his side as he took on the world, faced armies and tore down chaos. He could have loved him, could have had Steve love him back like he had always wanted. Well, in a way he couldn’t now with Bucky in this state. 

Steve had been his best friend before the war, he was sure of that now. The memories of the train and him falling, being dragged away, his arm severed and his body broken were all rushing back. They’d done everything together, had always been each other’s wingman. Girls had fawned over him, but he remembered only one face with pale blue eyes and a short stature that made him smile in that warm glow he equated with love. Steve had been the only one he’d say he was ‘in love’ with and he had helped him when Steve’s mother had died even though he hadn’t wanted it. Sarah was her name.

He shook his head to stop it all, his brown hair falling in his face as he stared at the concrete ground of the cellar they were in. His body was sitting restfully in the chair they scanned him in, making sure he wasn’t remembering anything. He hadn’t realized he’d been taken here, to where they made it all go away. Where they made him forget himself, let his mind be empty, blank and ready for a fresh start. But these memories were too precious. He couldn’t let them take these from him, not if he were dying and able to hold on with his last breath.

Something in him suddenly snapped.

His arm swung and caused the closest doctor to fly backward a half dozen feet, the others standing back as soldiers pointed their guns at him in a warning. But he was done with the warnings. He couldn’t do this any longer.

His handler walked into the room then and the Winter Soldier could feel his eyes narrow at him, his heart quicken in his chest and his thoughts centered on Steve Rogers, the man he had been sent to kill. The man who had been his friend. Who might still be his friend. The Soldier still wasn’t sure about that last thought even if Bucky was.

Alexander Pierce waved a hand, and as quickly as they’d pointed at him, the guns were lowered. This man was in charge right now and there was nothing the Winter Soldier could do about it. Not if he broke his will, not if he destroyed every bone in his body or smashed his skull in. No force could compare to the power he held.

“Mission report,” the man said, just as he had every time before. But this time, the Winter Soldier wasn’t his minion, wasn’t there to do his bidding. He guessed the handler already knew he hadn’t killed any of the three targets. No, Bucky had to remember they weren’t targets, not entirely. They were assignments, but not his enemies. Or at least, he didn’t think so based on the information flooding back to him.

When he didn’t give a response, his handler hit him squarely across the face, the back of his hand sending quick pain down his cheek, but he didn’t flinch. He couldn’t flinch. The Winter Soldier wasn’t weak like this new side of him was. There was the trained part of him that tried to suddenly suppress these memories, but something else fought back. The more human side he guessed.

He looked up at his handler, his mind at war, raging inside his head. He was no one. He was called the Winter Soldier. This was his handler who told him what to do and when to do, who to kill and who to manipulate. He was invisible, a deadly weapon.

But no, he was someone, someone who had lived and breathed life. His life. He had had a life before all this, when times were simpler and war was on the horizon but not yet there. He had had Steve by his side, and he with him to the end of the line.

“I knew him-“ he said softly, his mouth betraying him and his thoughts. But he couldn’t take it back. And the Soldier side of him couldn’t stop his next words either. “The man on the bridge? I knew him.” He said. Bucky, not the Winter Soldier, looked up at his handler then, his eyes glistening and making everything hazy and warped. Maybe it had always been that way though, he was only now seeing it clearly for the first time.

What was happening though, he wondered? His jaw clenched, and he could feel hot tears sting his eyes. He hadn’t felt these in a while, not since before they’d found him near dead in that snow-covered valley so long ago. It seemed like another life-time. But he remembered now, how these tears felt as his hand had slipped and Steve’s face had crumbled, his lips screaming a name that would no longer belong to him.

The handler commanded his full attention as his vision cleared, the tears receding and his mind focusing on the face in front of him. “You met him on an assignment earlier this week.” He said, but the Soldier knew he was lying. His mouth had twitched as he’d closed it, the lie slipping from his lips smoothly and without hesitation. Nothing could get past him, though. He knew when he was being lied to.

Bucky blinked, his mouth parting slightly in shock and he could not close it. This confirmed everything, his memories. They had happened to him, at different times, yes, but they had happened. To him. They weren’t fake, planted there to test something. No, they were his, his keepsakes for these years of pain, mental torture, and anguish. He realized in that moment that Hydra was using him, using him for their own means and not caring what he wanted, or what had happened to him. He was there’s now.

The handler looked at him a moment, his eyes boring into his and he cracked under pressure.

“But I knew him-“

His voice sounded weak and the Soldier side wanted to kill himself for sounding so pathetic. He could not be like this, lowly and broken. He could not break, he was an indestructible weapon.

A weapon used to harm the innocent, those that opposed the handler, even if they were right. Bucky briefly wondered if Steve was right, but then that would mean anything he’d ever known was wrong.

The handler stood then, but Bucky did not hear the words he uttered. He couldn’t hear anything anymore. He was broken, unusable. But at least they could not break him anymore, he thought. They could not tear down what was already falling apart and crumbled.

He held this in mind as they pushed him back with their hands, his chest heaving as they stuck something to bite down on into his mouth.

The Soldier knew what this was for. He had been trained, taught, to hold it in, to embrace and accept this. The pain that was to come was necessary, something that needed to happen for him to perform his missions well, to get the job done as it was meant to. He had been told this, and he somehow remembered now.

But he thought of other things too, even as the handler looked on as the braces wrapped around his arms, his breathing erratic. He pictured Steve smiling up at him as he handed him the key that had been hidden under the brick by his apartment door, the cool metal switching between their hands as their fingers met. He hadn’t wanted to let go, even after Steve had taken the key and was unlocking it. He had turned back to him, his face well below Bucky’s and he could remember thinking how different he looked on the outside after becoming Captain America. But nothing had really changed on the inside. Steve was still his Steve.

‘Because I’m with you to the end of the line.’

He remembered those words and vaguely considered if this was the end of the line for Bucky. The Bucky Barnes that Steve knew. But he wasn’t that Bucky anymore, was he? He had been changed by his handlers, changed by the targets he’d been assigned. Seeing Steve had just made it all so apparent and real. But it didn’t change that fact that he was still the Winter Soldier, that he had helped shaped this century for the worst.

The two metal plates fitted neatly on either side of his head before there was a sharpness he hadn’t prepared for. He could he hear his own screams, could feel his body taught with anticipation, but his mind wasn’t there anymore. It was drifting to an empty place that held no meaning, where all that existed was pain.

There, he was deadly, a weapon. There, he had missions, targets, handlers and a kill list.

There, he had no friends, memories, or a name.


End file.
